Kush Bottles lights up pot industry with online sales

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High school friends and basketball teammates, Nick Kovacevich, left, and Dallas Imbimbo started Kush Bottles in 2010.

Kush Bottles' showroom in Santa Ana. Prices at Kush range from $20 for 100 childproof bags to to $35 for 225 pop-top bottles and $32 for the Starbuds Dabuccino Rig, a Starbucks cup inspired dab rig used to consume oils and concentrates.

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Kush (another name for marijuana) Bottles launched its headquarters and showroom in Santa Ana and has since expanded with two additional warehouses in Denver, and Auburn, Wash., two states that recently legalized recreational use of marijuana.

Kush Bottles launched its e-commerce website in late June. The company sought out manufacturers in California that fit Consumer Product Safety Commission standards, making its merchandise safer than other low-brow packaging, which usually consists of plastic Ziploc bags.

Kush Bottles offers product packaging for dispensaries and medical offices. The legal marijuana market in California, valued at at $1.3 billion, is the largest in the nation, according to a recent report from The ArcView Group, an Oakland-based cannabis industry research firm.

Dallas Imbimbo, left, and Nick Kovacevich co-founded Kush Bottles using money from the sale of Pack My Dorm, a business Imbimbo created while studying business at UC Davis..

Hatorade Oil Rig, Starbuds Dabuccino Rig and Rasta Waterpipe are just a few of the top-selling items sold on the new e-commerce website of Santa Ana-based Kush Bottles.

The company, founded by Nick Kovacevich and Dallas Imbimbo in 2010, is quickly capitalizing on the growing legal pot industry by selling its quirky marijuana pipes, containers and accessories to dispensaries and marijuana producers.

“Guys are used to dealing in cash, in phone or in-person transactions,” said Kovacevich, 29, the company’s chief executive. “So we are taking traditional business mentality and applying it to an old-school, former black market industry and trying to transform that industry.”

Products include containers for concentrate (hash oil and wax), labels and child-resistant pop-top bottles. Kovacevich said the site is popular with millennials, who are more likely to use the Internet and mobile technology to place orders.

Kovacevich and Imbimbo, who were high school basketball teammates, reconnected after college and started Kush Bottles out of an Irvine warehouse. They funded the company with proceeds from the sale of Pack My Dorm, a business Imbimbo created while studying business at UC Davis.

The legal marijuana market in California, valued at at $1.3 billion, is the largest in the nation, according to a recent report from The ArcView Group, an Oakland-based cannabis industry research firm.

Prices at Kush range from $20 for 100 childproof bags to $35 for 225 pop-top bottles and $32 for the Starbuds Dabuccino Rig, a Starbucks cup-inspired pipe used to consume oils and concentrates.

A Growing Business

Kush (another name for marijuana) Bottles launched its headquarters and showroom in Santa Ana and has since expanded with two additional warehouses in Colorado and Washington, two states that recently legalized recreational use of marijuana.

The company evolved as a solution to a common problem in the pot trade: inadequate storage.

“No one specifically focused on targeting that market,” Kovacevich said. “It was similar to selling picks and shovels in the gold rush.”

Four states have legalized recreational marijuana: Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon. In addition, 23 states have legalized medical marijuana use.

The company sought out manufacturers in California that fit Consumer Product Safety Commission standards, making its merchandise safer than existing packaging, which usually consists of plastic zip-close bags. Once marijuana became legal in Colorado in 2012, CPSC standards for packaging were required for dispensaries.

Kush’s website launch allows customers to have accurate, real-time inventory, see shipping times and receive reminder emails when it’s time to reorder based on order history. Processing orders has also been streamlined.

While other companies have similar websites, Kovacevich said Kushbottles.com differentiates itself with features that include local delivery and a cash payment option. The site also offers an array of products including papers, labels and concentrate containers.

The company can fulfill website orders from a desktop computer or a mobile phone, helping to drive up business for Kush.

Today, the website gets about 100 orders a week, which vary in size. A larger order might hit $10,000 while an average order amounts to $2,000.

“We’ve doubled the amount of business we’ve been doing on the website,” Kovacevich added. “Our old system was not nearly as technologically savvy as our new system.”

The company, which started as a two-man operation, now employs 28 people. Revenue has more than doubled in two years, up to $2.48 million in 2015 so far, from $1.3 million in 2013.

Most recently, Kush was included on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies and is the only cannabis-related company in California to make the list.

Kovacevich said the founders’ goal is to encourage the legal sale of marijuana.

“We are the ones that want to pave the way and get these people on the fence about legalizing marijuana,” Kovacevich said.